This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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You know a bit about Black Friday sales, of course. In fact, you've probably heard quite a bit about Black Friday recently. The time has now passed, but I don't know if you might still have a hangover from all those Black Friday emails, texts, social media messages, ads in your feed. It's relentless, and it's relentless because many businesses earn 50% or more of their annual sales during this six-week period towards the end of the year. So not just Black Friday, but the whole holiday season.
Of course, it's very dependent on what kind of business you have. And today's caller has a retail business that is not typically dependent on holiday sales. But, of course, he wants to juice the numbers a bit. By that, I mean he wants to have an end-of-year promotion. So how can you increase end-of-year sales in a non-holiday business?
It's a good question, and I love our listeners thinking creatively, trying to improve things for their life, their work, and maybe this will be helpful for somebody else out there as well. So how do you stand out with an end-of-year sale? That is the question. It's coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hey, this is Steve from San Antonio.
My Black Friday promotion went well last year, but I'd like to do something else to push more sales in December. Specifically, I'm trying to figure out what makes for a compelling reason to buy something during this time that isn't necessarily a holiday gift. I'm thinking of putting my business up for sale next year, so whatever numbers I can put on the board before December 31st will help. But I realize that's not the most exciting reason for my customers to buy something. So what should I do?
Any ideas? [Music]
Well, I love a good promotion. I think when a business runs a sale that is fun and interesting and lively, then it just tends to increase engagement overall, not just sales, but engagement and interest. And the customer is gonna be just ready to notice the next sale if this one isn't good. So what Steve needs here is intelligent design, right?
The whole key is to make it fun and interesting and generate that response as we talked about without being too annoying, right? 'Cause you want people to look forward to the sale, not just be like, oh gosh, it's another promotion. And as Steve wisely understands here, his customers don't care about his goal of increasing the calendar year sales numbers, like that's not what they care about at all. They care about what's in it for them. So you just always wanna focus on that, like how can I deliver a good benefit for my customers?
And so getting creative is good, trying some kind of different approach. You could perhaps point out the irony or the lack of normal connection to this time of year. It could be like every other business is doing holiday sales. So we thought we would too, even though we're selling, I don't know, orthopedic supports or whatever it is that we're doing, does nothing to do with the holidays in particular. You can also just use this time to practice getting you and your customers in the habit of responding to promotions.
Like I said, good businesses do this all the time. You want a marketing calendar that goes throughout the year. So you can choose to tie that to specific dates, such as the holiday season or Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and so on. Or you just kind of create your own holidays. Prime Day is the prime, no pun intended, example of that.
It's a huge shopping holiday that Amazon basically made up and now other companies use it for their promotions as well. So again, the goal is to get people to take action or at least pay attention without becoming annoyed. If you let that be your North Star and focus on what's in it for your customers, I think that is the path forward. So good luck, Steve. Let us know how things turn out.
Listeners, I'm cheering you on. It's such a busy time. I know people are doing all kinds of things out there. Make sure to take some time to think about your goals in terms of your business goals, but also just your life goals as well. What do you want to see happen in the next few weeks?
I'll be doing that. I'll share some of that journey with you as well. And I hope you'll continue to listen. All right, that's it for today. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
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from the Onward Project.
